Argentine Police Tied To Kidnapings

November 20, 1987|By New York Times News Service.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — What judicial authorities describe as a kidnaping-for-ransom network-within the Argentine federal police force-has come to light with the discovery in recent days of the bodies of three missing businessmen.

The bodies of Osvaldo Sivak, who was kidnaped in 1985, and Federico Benjamin Neuman, kidnaped in 1982, were found buried near a highway 35 miles south of the capital. The body of Eduardo Oxenford, who disappeared in 1978, had been cremated behind a house in suburban Lomas de Zamora, according to a police officer who confessed to the killing.

All three were shot after their families paid ransoms reportedly totaling $1.7 million to $3 million.

Five current or former police officers have been arrested. Two others went into hiding to avoid arrest, but authorities said they were close to capturing them. An eighth accused man, Alberto Ruben Caeta, died in his cell last week; he apparently hanged himself.

While there was no known political motive for the crimes, there have been allegations that the network developed out of the climate of unrestrained violence that existed during the counterinsurgency campaign the police and the armed forces waged against leftist guerrillas in the late 1970s.

Interior Minister Enrique Nosiglia said this week that the three cases were linked in that some of the police officers charged had moonlighted as bodyguards for the victims or members of their families.